It should be the end of the line for California – Latest News
What strikes sooner than California’s high-speed rail, practically 20 years in the making with zero monitor laid?
Well, nearly something, apparently.
But on this case, we imply the evident bilking of taxpayers.
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a information convention at the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s Southern Railhead website to announce the subsequent section of construction, in Wasco, Calif., Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026. AP
As the California Post lately reported: Per the project’s own inspector basic, high-speed rail consultants collected more than $680,000 in doubtful journey reimbursements — together with for first-class aircraft tickets, worldwide jaunts and rides to locations like gyms, tiki rooms and nightclubs.
Taxpayers even coated payments for a flight through personal plane, Uber Black luxurious service, and rides from golf equipment at 2:30 a.m.
That’s galling — and but another excuse to deliver the troubled project to a halt.
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California’s high-speed rail experiment, dubbed “the train to nowhere” for its uselessness, has failed.
Among the lowlights: a “shadow government” of consultants that successfully ran the troubled project and permitted their own work — detailed in a blistering 2018 California State Auditor report.
Now, the California High Speed Rail Authority admits, again, that it lets consultants run the asylum.
Construction of the San Joaquin River Viaduct, an roughly 4,700-foot construction that can span the San Joaquin River and the Union Pacific tracks parallel to State Route 99, is seen on Wednesday, July 5, 2017, in Fresno, California. The high-speed prepare is meant to run between SF and Anaheim at a price of $64 billion. Getty Images
While the authority has did not curb consultants gone wild, the project’s funds is untenable: High-speed rail is projected to run dry of money in 2027, the audit discovered.
Who can justify pouring more tax money into this mess?
At least one candidate for governor will get it: Steve Hilton, on the poll Nov. 3, has pledged to halt taxpayer funding for the project on day one if elected.
State and federal taxpayers have already got lavished up to $15 billion, mixed, on the debacle — with no tracks, no trains and no rail journey to show for it.
Current estimated price tag for the project: $231 billion.
Compare that to what state voters had been promised in 2008: a bullet prepare that might whisk riders from San Francisco to LA in two hours and 40 minutes, to be constructed for no more than $45 billion and accomplished by 2020.
A digital rendering exhibits the California High-Speed Rail project. California High-Speed Rail Authority
To call that a joke is simply too charitable.
In 2026, the project inches alongside as a wasteful, pitiful, downsized shell of these guarantees.
Seven years in the past, Gov. Gavin Newsom all however vowed to scrap it, solely to backtrack and settle for (goals of) abbreviated rail from Merced to Bakersfield. He went on to put in cronies at the rail authority in May of this 12 months.
This is the similar Newsom who in 2014 stated the project fudged numbers to keep tax money rolling in: The then-lieutenant gov known as ridership projections “wildly overstated” and income figures “manipulated.”
Well. Is it any marvel the project’s a laughingstock?
Yet regardless of all the failure, all the shrunken ambition and all the ridicule — Newsom & Co. received’t consign the mess to the scrap heap.
Why?
From nostril to caboose, the project’s been a fail.
The solely factor slower than the project itself may be Sacramento’s will to course-correct.
This actually should be the end of the line.
